TED: Sam Harris on science and morality

if this is going to bore you, don't watch it, and then also don't comment on how boring it is. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj9oB4zpHww

"Who are we to say that the proud denizens of an ancient culture are wrong to force their wives and daughters to live in cloth bags? And who are we to say even that it's wrong for them to beat them with lengths of steel cable, or throw battery acid in their faces, if they decline the privilege of being smothered in this way?

Who are we NOT to say this? Who are we to pretend we know so little about human wellbeing that we have to be non-judgmental about this?"

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Originally Posted by gwahir

"Who are we to say that the proud denizens of an ancient culture are wrong to force their wives and daughters to live in cloth bags? And who are we to say even that it's wrong for them to beat them with lengths of steel cable, or throw battery acid in their faces, if they decline the privilege of being smothered in this way?

Who are we NOT to say this? Who are we to pretend we know so little about human wellbeing that we have to be non-judgmental about this?"

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I haven't watched it yet (I will, now) but who exactly is it that is advocating such non-judgemental attitudes towards such archaic behaviour?

well a more complete quote (i didn't want to spoil too much, you could say) is

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Originally Posted by sam harris

Take women's bodies, for example. What to do about them. Here's one thing you can do about them -- you can cover them up. Now it is the position, generally speaking, of our intellectual community that, while we might not like this, we might consider it as wrong in Boston or Palo Alto, who are we to say that the proud denizens of an ancient culture...

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...etc.

and he is right about that. moral relativism is a JUGGERNAUT in modern philosophy. ultimately. that is to say, lots of moral philosophers (and laypeople -- don't forget them!) will maintain that X is right or wrong only to a point and ultimately there is no real reason to maintain that Y viewpoint is more or less correct than another. moral relativism underlies a whole lot of modern thinking to the point that in many contexts it is treated as axiomatic.

lol he looks like the elastic guy from fantastic four
tbh him speaking about intelligent stuff like that goes well with that.
i had quite a lot of fun pretending it was elastic man from fantastic four that whole video.


pretty interesting stuff though i have to say

I usually think a lot of these TED talks are a little wonky and packed with grade A BS.

However, after hearing only 4 and a half minutes of this lecture, I actually agree and will agree with this guy, at least on his broadest points. That said, science has a ways to go until it can uncover the niceties of morality, though there's no reason why we should or should not expect it to.

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Originally Posted by gwahir

and he is right about that. moral relativism is a JUGGERNAUT in modern philosophy. ultimately. that is to say, lots of moral philosophers (and laypeople -- don't forget them!) will maintain that X is right or wrong only to a point and ultimately there is no real reason to maintain that Y viewpoint is more or less correct than another. moral relativism underlies a whole lot of modern thinking to the point that in many contexts it is treated as axiomatic.

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And it also uncovers a reticent attitude to absolutism in all its forms, including that implicit in science. I feel this extreme push towards relativism is an over-reaction to the extreme Euro-centric views of the19th and early 20th century as well as the assumptions that certain societal views and morals were absolutely true without exhibiting any skepticism towards them.

Even though we have to avoid that extreme viewpoint, radical relativism is also a wrong and dangerous viewpoint as well.


EDIT: By the way a lot of physicists do think that String Theory is bogus because there is no experimental evidence supporting it.

This video bored me and is boring.

j/k bro (though I will say the word axiomatic is never necessary)

While we can recognize that some obvious things that people do in other cultures are wrong I still don't think it is anyone's job to be the moral police. While we must not condone such action it is not our responsibility, or even our place, to do anything about it. Every culture has archaic traditions, and it has been proven empirically that any culture will eventually evolve away from these things. To try and mess with it before any culture is ready to involve is just asking for trouble.

EDIT: I didn't watch the video, I'm just making a comment based on gwahir's post.

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Originally Posted by Mr. E

EDIT: I didn't watch the video, I'm just making a comment based on gwahir's post.

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you need to watch the fucking video before you can understand what gwahir said

Or I can read the direct quote and make a comment on the direct quote because the direct quote is a complete thought?

I was agreeing in that there's nothing wrong with being judgmental, but disagreeing with any potential implication that anything should be done about it.

alright fine whatever. your statement was a sensible rebuttal.

i disagree with your opinion that there should not be intervention. no, i don't think it should be armed intervention necessarily (unless there's a holocaust or slaughter as in rwanda during its civil), but that doesn't mean that outsiders have no place to help. perhaps the best way outsiders can help is by supporting grassroots movements that have already sprung up in the country rather than forcing their own agenda and viewpoints on a population.

well, to respond to mr e's ill-thought out and unadvisable post:

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Originally Posted by Mr. E

it has been proven empirically that any culture will eventually

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i should say that this point is technically incorrect. i'm sure you know it's impossible to "prove empirically" that anything WILL happen.

but i'll stop nitpicking. more importantly, it's incorrect in every other possible way there is to be incorrect. it's not even vaguely correct. not a single culture on earth has "evolved out of these things" -- presumably you mean archaic, barbaric and immoral traditions -- and certainly not any culture that calls home the united states of america. (good luck drawing a relevant distinction between the stuff that's wrong with the states and the stuff that's wrong with the middle eastern theocracies -- i just tried; no dice.) not only is there a lack of "empirical proof" that "any culture will eventually evolve away" from archaic barbarism, but there is mountains of historical evidence suggesting that it's very possible for entire cultures to implode on themselves because of them. what an utterly vapid claim. it's just completely wrong.

as for your second vapid claim, what's the value in judgment if it doesn't lead to action? what's the value of belief that doesn't lead to action? nothing at all. there's limited value in saying "those people should not be doing that", in that it might lead to you and your culture behaving better, but your culture should already be behaving better, because you know well enough to understand that what their culture is doing is wrong. you say we shouldn't intervene? if they were just stupid and simple with silly old traditions that didn't do any harm, i MIGHT say you have a valid point. but they're inflicting pain and suffering on their women. brainwashing their everyone with hateful religious dogma. pretty much everything about that culture that harris was talking about is WRONG, and is harming innocent people. how can you say it's just to avoid intervention? it's the definition of unjust. what makes an innocent person in your country more or less deserving of aid, understanding, mercy and protection than an innocent person in any other? "we should deal with the problems in our own country." i'm not simply resorting to hyperbole when i say that it's this kind of thinking that hurts humanitarianism, promotes closed-bordered nationalism and basically allows suffering and torture to keep happening. that's not exaggeration. it's fact.

if something is unjust, and one has a way to solve it, one should damn well solve it. screw this anti-intervention bullshit.

edit: sycld, how did you not already say all this?

That is a fair opinion, though I doubt most world powers would be very effective at supporting grassroots movements these days. These people have a lot more determination than the communists did (which is the last time I am aware of that powers effectively and (relatively) peacefully subverted a major way of living).

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Originally Posted by sycld

And it also uncovers a reticent attitude to absolutism in all its forms, including that implicit in science. I feel this extreme push towards relativism is an over-reaction to the extreme Euro-centric views of the19th and early 20th century as well as the assumptions that certain societal views and morals were absolutely true without exhibiting any skepticism towards them.

Even though we have to avoid that extreme viewpoint, radical relativism is also a wrong and dangerous viewpoint as well.

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i think this is right.

We're just going to have to agree to disagree gwahir. You and I both know our worldviews are radically different and neither of us will change our minds.

I will say though that:
1. It is nobody's business to force people to act or not act in a way that is not almost universally viewed as detrimental.
2. What barbaric customs are still in effect in America? I realize that you think America is god awful (and I won't argue the politics with you) but the people as a whole are really not hurting anybody.

well okay look

your education system is embarrassing. worse. it is shameful. (so's ours. not as bad, but also not as good i guess.)

your government is still debating stem cell research and gay marriage when it should be debating human rights and the wellbeing of people in AND out of your country's boarders

your country is essentially a very sophistocated, very powerful theocracy and that is just not on

also your first point is just absurd and repulsive and you are a hypocrite about it

even if it is nobody's business to force people to act a certain way, then why is your government still for the most part preventing gays from marrying and persecuting people for actions that are "not almost universally viewed as detrimental" (ie. about which there is any controversy at all in the major sphere)

basically your country's government (as most governments) has always made jolly practice of violating your first point's principle there and apparently you don't consider that a major enough problem to worry about. would you like to try to convince me that these practices are not directly energised by what you call "archaic traditions"?

until a culture evolves out of archaic traditions, there is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that ANY culture will do that. NO culture has EVER evolved out of its archaic traditions, and i can't believe you don't see that. i absolutely cannot believe that.

and hey if anyone feels like discussing the content of the video, go ahead

Ok, so the facts/values distinction he talks about right at the start is a classic piece of enlightenment thinking implicit in the logic of many of the philosophers of that period (and ever since), but first elaborated by David Hume. In a way, though, the problem goes back to Occam, who, thinking that man having a telos (a natural purpose), contradicted the divine omnipotence (because it meant that some things just were that way as opposed to God deciding EVERYTHING), made the natural law contingent on God's will. Anyway, Hume comes along and asserts "It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger," and from this position followers of his facts/values distinction try to resurrect some sort of morality in the forms of utilitarianism, emotivism, quasi-realism, and universal prescriptivism (incidentally, a great critique of all of these positions is to be found in Brecher's "Getting What You Want; A Critique of Liberal Morality").
Now, the reason for the facts/values distinction is precisely to defend the enlightenment rallying call of "freedom!"; if man lacks a telos, and if values are actually a matter of taste, then obviously the church and state have far less reason to interfere in a man's life and a man has far more choice in constructing his worldview and lifestyle.
Along comes Sam Harris; "This facts/values distinction thing is an illusion.". Oh, right. "You see we know that some actions objectively make people suffer more than others." Uh huh. "So there we are hey presto morality." Um no because well you are begging the question, you are trying to show that facts and values are not distinct, what you are doing is taking your set of values i.e. "Suffering is bad, the burka is bad" and applying these to existing facts. Even in your pseudo-mythical world where we can directly read brain states you would need to attach values to these brain states in order to do anything about this information.
Ok, but let's be charitable, presume he knows this, and that what he's suggesting is a new ethical theory based on "objective" wellbeing (currently limited to physical wellbeing and intuition based on our knowledge of what distress and maladaption look like, but eventually broadening out to an "objective" knowledge of the contents of the mind). Now, the way that he makes it sound alright as an ethical theory is by being superficial to the point of platitude, with the exception of some trendy liberal examples which won't hurt the feelings of anyone watching. If there is an objective wellbeing that I'm meant to be hitting, am I morally obliged not to smoke, drink, have sex lest I get AIDs, avoid sex lest I get prostate cancer? I mean, if, as opposed to mobilising a theory to further his own particular worldview and agenda, he actually believes what he is saying, isn't he suggesting a potentially authoritarian moral theory? Or perhaps his objective standards are less demanding than that, let's assume so. What are these standards? A certain blood pressure level? A certain set of beliefs? Or maybe we are dealing only with interpersonal relationships. Liberal society is obsessed with this subject, so perhaps I can safely presume that this is the case. In this case, all his theory states is that if an objective state of affairs comes about, I should alter my behavioural pattern accordingly. So if a woman cries, I should stop hitting her. Ok, great advice, but we don't need a theory for that (unless you're going to at least fill it up with some examples that are closer to home for your smug liberal audience, you equivocating dickwad). But really he doesn't even mean that. I don't think so, at least. I think, if I asked him "Guy 1 will go through intense emotional suffering and probably take his own life if guy 2 marries guy 2's fiancée (who Guy 1 has loved for years). Is guy 2 responsible for guy 1?" He'd probably say "no if guy 2 didn't know about guy 1's feelings, maybe if he did"; but his theory is quite clear that guy 2 is equally culpable in both cases, because in both cases evil is merely the objective damage to wellbeing irrespective of knowledge (otherwise his attacks on non-liberal Muslim cultures would be merely "what they're doing is objectively wrong, but they believe they're doing right so they're not culpable as individuals"). That is, unless Harris presupposes some moral system that says "Guy 1 and Guy 2 have a right to do anything they like unless they directly injure each other"... but this is what Harris is ostensibly challenging.
Ok, but I suppose for all my criticism, at least this is better than moral relativism. Oh wait, his completely unspecified, unqualified "but some things may be of equal value without falsifying what I'm saying" means that he actually does say absolutely nothing substantial whatsoever.
Except dropping in his characteristic "but whilst I hate all religion I think Buddhism is great" bullshit.
But then what was I expecting from a man who thinks the important objection to torture is that we can see the suffering, and that if we could only develop a pill that prevented any physical sign of internalised suffering, then we'd be ok with it?

I mean don't get me wrong, I hate just about every moral relativism and moral absolutism there are going. Ok, that's not true I'm somewhere between Kant, Camus and Catholicism.
I just think that when this guy speaks against relativism he chiefly a)says something which is superficially quite nice but has ugly implications b)says something so in tune with the cultural zeitgeist that it makes my skin crawl (protip:any view that is intellectually fashionable is 99.9% likely to be wrong) c) flaps his jaw and makes noises without his propositions actually committing him to any position whatsoever.

i don't think i agree with you, think. (you're going to outmanoeuvre me in every way if i go in too deep here so i'm going to duck out if it becomes unmanageable for me) but:

a) your understanding of what he calls "human flourishing" is pretty shallow -- i think he's talking about something he isn't defining, because it isn't really the point of the proposition. "physical wellbeing" is a rather meaningless term for someone like me, considering that everything IS physical anyway, so if i said it, it'd include mental as well as "physical" wellbeing. but i think it is in a VERY ROUGH BUT SUFFICIENT FOR NOW way equivocable to "happiness".

b) there are many ways to promote human flourishing. yes. that doesn't make his point meaningless. we should be able sensibly to determine what things promote human flourishing and what inhibit it. just like physical health. i'm pretty much repeating exactly what he said. why does this mean all that he's saying is insubstantial?

c) what exactly are you saying in the final sentence of your first post? if we don't know something's wrong, we can't fix it. are you going off some other video/quotation that i haven't seen/heard/read? what he is a problem with is not visual signs of internal suffering, but any internal suffering -- he is claiming, maybe over-optimistically, that we should be able to tell (better than we currently are telling) when someone is suffering, and with some actual investigation and intelligence, sort out what causes it. what you're saying about this pill is insane and absolutely not what he would say, unless i'm very much mistaken.

d) he kind of goes of this superficially (do remember that he has ~15 minutes to make this speech), but he is saying that morality concerns the experiences and wellbeing of creatures able to have experiences and wellbeing. that's a little bit of a leap, but, i think, a reasonable one.

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Originally Posted by gwahir

...and ultimately there is no real reason to maintain that Y viewpoint is more or less correct than another.

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Do you have such a reason? Other than "Well, Y viewpoint just sounds right to me"?

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Originally Posted by gwahir

moral relativism underlies a whole lot of modern thinking to the point that in many contexts it is treated as axiomatic.

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It's treated as axiomatic because people have come to realize that morality is a purely social construct whose terms and ideas and starting assumptions don't reflect anything that actually exists in reality. No matter how self-evident it is to you that correct morality consists of whatever you think it consists of.

Just going off of what is present in the video and nothing else external to this (as this is all I know of Sam Harris):

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Originally Posted by Think

a)says something which is superficially quite nice but has ugly implications

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What, pray tell, are the ugly implications you are speaking of in particular?

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Originally Posted by Think

b)says something so in tune with the cultural zeitgeist that it makes my skin crawl (protip:any view that is intellectually fashionable is 99.9% likely to be wrong)

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I'm confused here I suppose. This talk is rather superficial, and some of the details are sort of silly, but frankly I expect nothing less from TED talks (namely, cocktail philosophization which makes the viewers feel real smart). I don't, for example, believe necessarily that corporal punishment (when delivered by the parents at any rate) is "wrong" in any obvious objective way.

But beyond that... it's also intellectually fashionable to oppose racism. On that note, it's intellectually unfashionable to scientifically inquire into the potential physiological and genetic trends and differences between racial, supraracial, or subracial groups. I think the former in principle is a correct attitude, and the latter is an incorrect attitude.

Just because an attitude or belief is intellectually fashionable doesn't make it wrong (do you really believe that entire races might be subhuman?), but it does make it subject to all sorts of excesses that more thoughtful people must always be vigilant against. And just in this talk considered in isolation, he doesn't get into the niceties enough to indicate whether he really is taking this attitude in any way to excess or not.

Also, I question just how intellectually fashionable it his to harbor this sort of attitude towards morality. It seems to me that it is more fashionable to write off differences in a culture's moral teachings compared to your own just as a cultural difference without making a value judgement either way, though I might be wrong.

And at any rate, yes, his messages are so broad that he's avoiding the difficult and fraught questions that inevitably come from holding any principle at all.

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c) flaps his jaw and makes noises without his propositions actually committing him to any position whatsoever.

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He's merely outlining how to consider morality outside of a religious context without giving into moral relativism. It's not completely devoid of content, but I suppose his points are obvious to you. As silly as it may seem, they might not be to everyone. I've known of plenty of people who contend that all atheists are sociopaths since they have no moral code because they don't believe in a god.

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Originally Posted by Syme

It's treated as axiomatic because people have come to realize that morality is a purely social construct whose terms and ideas and starting assumptions don't reflect anything that actually exists in reality. No matter how self-evident it is to you that correct morality consists of whatever you think it consists of.

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Yes, morality is a societal construct, but you can't say that the entire content of all moral codes are simply arbitrary, can you? You're not even going to admit that there are built-in propensities for certain behaviors as well as certain conditions which tend to make individuals content and certain conditions which tend to make them suffer? This sort of human preprogramming can serve as the basis for a moral code or at least the pattern for what would constitute a sound moral code.

Humans are not just born as blank slates which can be socially engineered to any arbitrary degree. Just ask a neurologist if you don't believe me.

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Originally Posted by sycld

Yes, morality is a societal construct, but you can't say that the entire content of all moral codes are simply arbitrary, can you? You're not even going to admit that there are built-in propensities for certain behaviors as well as certain conditions which tend to make individuals content and certain conditions which tend to make them suffer? This sort of human preprogramming can serve as the basis for a moral code or at least the pattern for what would constitute a sound moral code.

Humans are not just born as blank slates which can be socially engineered to any arbitrary degree. Just ask a neurologist if you don't believe me.

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Sure, I agree that such propensities exist. And of course I agree that some conditions make people happy while others make them unhappy!

What I disagree with is the attempt to jump from these facts to abstract moral truth claims which people try to pretend are "correct" in some objective way. If you think that morality is about human happiness, great. That's a fine interpretation of morality and a fine basis for a moral code. But don't try to pretend that it correctly reflects some universal moral truth and that moral codes which hold otherwise are somehow "incorrect". Because the decision to associate morality with human happiness in the first place is an arbitrary one with no basis whatsoever in "the real world". Someone could just as easily say "No, morality has nothing to do with human happiness, morality is all about X instead".... and how could you argue with them in terms of concrete correctness or wrongness? There's nothing real or factual you could point to that proves you right and them wrong, no matter how self-evident or reasonable you think it is to draw that line connecting morality to human happiness, and no matter how objectionable you think it is to connect morality to something else. Because morality, being purely a social construct, being purely an abstract invented by human minds, and reflecting nothing in the real world that's subject to examination or verification by an observer, is totally outside the field of subjects that be discussed using terms like "correct" or "incorrect", or "valid" or "invalid". Discussing the "correctness" of a moral idea is EXACTLY the same as discussing the "correctness" of a phrase like "blue is a pretty color". But people who make comments like the one gwahir has made would seem to be suggesting that it IS somehow possible to detect and tap into some objective/universal moral truth that's out there floating around in space somewhere (whether it's "morality is about happiness" or anything else), and by comparing various real-world moral codes that objective truth, determine whether they are wrong or right based on whether they square up with it. That's what I'm saying is bogus.

TLDR: I'm not saying it's impossible (or bad) to construct a moral code in which morality is associated with human happiness, I'm just saying that you can't claim this moral code is more objectively valid than the moral code of a person who throws acid on women who don't wear hijab. There's no point of reference for such a claim. Claims of objective validity or rectitude need a reference point.

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Originally Posted by Syme

TLDR: I'm not saying it's impossible (or bad) to construct a moral code in which morality is associated with human happiness, I'm just saying that you can't claim this moral code is more objectively valid than the moral code of a person who throws acid on women who don't wear hijab. There's no point of reference for such a claim. Claims of objective validity or rectitude need a reference point.

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You're right. My thought was getting muddled. And I agree that what standard one determines whether an action is moral or not is invented rather than set out as a cosmic absolute. (I prefer saying "invented" rather than "arbitrary," but yeah I'm agreeing with you completely.)

What I should have said was that there are certain social behaviors "programmed" in us that allow us to live in social settings at all. For example, society is impossible if every one of its members goes around killing other people randomly.

On the other hand, "thou shalt not kill" and "thou shalt not steal" aren't exactly the most profound statements on morality, so perhaps using humans' natural pro-social behavioral tendencies as a basis for a social moral code isn't going to buy you very much.

Perhaps it is possible to go one step further and perform the same mental experiment that the British empiricists did: What would people do and what activities would they pursue outside of the more stringent stricture of civilization? Of course, such a question probably would just produce answers that reflect your own cultural bias and nothing more... And anyway this question is still an arbitrary standard for moral precepts.

Would now be a bad time to point out that I personally am not the American government or educational system nor do I agree with everything they do?

Also, being inconsiderate and bigoted and being barbaric are not the same thing.

Also I have to say that this is a bit silly:

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Originally Posted by gwahir

your country is essentially a very sophistocated, very powerful theocracy and that is just not on

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The politics of nearly ALL countries are, to some degree, influenced by the religious attitudes of whatever portions of the populace hold such attitudes. Yeah, in the US, we have more of a politically active Christian population than do most other "first-world" countries (i.e. Western European countries and Australia), and thus our politics are more influenced by the religious attitudes of this population segment. That's not the same thing as a theocracy, though. A theocracy is a government where clerics or religious leaders control the political process; "control", not "exercise more influence upon it than they do in Belgium or the UK or Australia". To suggest that Christian religious leaders control American politics is frankly absurd, and it betrays the unrealistic view of an outsider who bases their view of American politics on sensationalist caricature and hasn't invested a great deal of effort in actually looking at our system. The political influence of Christian religious leaders in America is a far cry from "control" even if it's greater than in most European countries.

EDIT: Calling America a "theocracy" for this reason is like me calling European governments "fascist" because they typically don't have free-speech protections quite as robust as those we have in the US.

Don't forget that every American wants to be a cowboy and tries to emulate them to the highest degree possible.

I wholeheartedly agree with think on this.